Fully aware of all these clichés, Joshua, Hannah, and I set out for Frontier City this past Saturday. I wanted to share with the blog universe a little about our adventure. After our visit, I have reached certain conclusions:
- I am a Big Chicken: Since I was a little girl, I have been terrified of amusement park rides. I remember crying on a bench at Disney World when I was maybe twelve because I was simply too scared to board the runaway mine train. I did not ride a roller coaster until I was at least fourteen when I was too embarrassed to admit my phobia to my school friends. As the Zingo chugged slowly up the first hill, I remember thinking that if I survived this ride, I would never ride another roller coaster. Frankly, every amusement park experience since then has been some twisted variation of that fateful day. When Joshua and I went to Six Flags before we married, I was too embarrassed to admit to this boy I liked that I was trying not to throw up as they fastened the shoulder straps over me, my feet dangling in the air. On another visit, he tried to get me to ride the Titan. I stepped into the car, looked up to see how high the ride went, and stepped directly out on the other side. My sister and sisters-in-law have always ridiculed me about this phobia, and I secretly think my husband arranges these amusement park encounters because it is one of the rare times he gets to really see me squirm. This weekend, before we tackled any big roller coasters, we rode this little ride that spins one way in a circle and goes up and down. For you readers familiar with our beloved Bell’s Amusement Park, it was probably somewhere between the Himalaya and the Scrambler. Two cars behind us, a little girl clenched the bar and screamed bloody murder throughout the entire ride, the veins literally popping and pulsing around her eyeballs. I thought to myself: Girl, I’ve been there. Later, my charming sister-in-law, Hannah, allowed me to get strapped in for the upside-down and backwards roller coaster before turning to me and saying something like, “It will be over before you know it, but, of course, Leah wet her pants on this ride.
- I am a Germ-o-Phobe: My mother always told me that as a small child, I would always avoid filthy bathrooms. One time, Mom and Dad convinced me the circus was over at intermission because I refused to use the toilet. I have to admit that I still experience that apprehension, particularly in amusement park bathrooms. I think that Frontier City literally had one public bathroom in the entire park, and on the day of our trip, half of the stalls were closed with signs indicating they were not in working order. Despite these signs, park visitors remained skeptical. Why is that? You could put up a sign that says, “Some creep loaded the toilet with paper towels and smeared feces on the walls of this stall. Out of Order” and people would still peak inside just to be sure. At amusement parks, the floors of the bathroom are always wet, and the origin of the water is always unknown. Filthy children with face paint peer beneath stalls. Employees leave the restroom without washing their hands (Although frankly, I am not convinced they are any dirtier than those of us that elected to wash our hands in the amusement park restroom). You wait in line to use the facilities, and inevitably, the longer that you wait, the more concerned you become about what your predecessor is doing the stall you are soon to occupy.
Needless to say, I psyched myself out and immediately left the line for the restroom. Later, I would get desperate with only a Port-a-Potty in sight. I approached the potty booth with another lady, each of us tentatively tugging at the door handles on blue row. I finally found an unoccupied unit and left my new friend to fend for herself. Holding my nose, I immediately began to recite the most important rule of Port-a-Potty etiquette: No matter what you do, do NOT, I repeat, do not, look in the toilet. I closed my eyes and assumed the position just as my new friend wrenched open the door to the unit she HAD to have seen me just enter. During this brief moment of panic, I managed to make awkward eye contact with several other friends waiting to use the plastic facilities.
- I am a Snob: Since I officially became an adult, I don’t know that I have ever visited an amusement park that I am not a little embarrassed to be there. Amusement park attendees are always colorful: Gigantic women in wet tube tops with Tinkerbell tattooed on their right shoulders eating a turkey leg followed by a line of barefoot and crying children wearing the remnants of an oversized lollypop on their faces, the “Pat”-like visitor that, despite your best efforts, you cannot tell whether he/she is a man or a woman, families dressed with matching, tucked-in polos armed with professional cameras snapping pictures of some absolutely indistinguishable concrete monument erected in front of the saloon façade, teenage brace-faces covered in pimples getting hot and heavy against a tree covered in about a thousand hardened gum wads, each a different fluorescent color. Frankly, the amusement park crowd operates like social birth control-It is a warning to our society about the all-too-real results of hasty couplings. Despite these thoughts, I visited the amusement park. We were literally among the masses. The odds some visitor looked at me like I was some weirdo have to be pretty high.
- I am a Picky Eater: Before we left the park for the day, we decided to cap off our visit with a funnel cake. After waiting in line for several minutes, we placed our order with an uninspired summer employee covered in powdered sugar. While we waited for our funnel cake to be prepared by some invisible employee in the back, the girls that took our order threw curd and powdered sugar at one another, dipping their hands in the powdered sugar after wiping the counter with cleaner and licking their finger tips before repeating the process. When our funnel cake was ready, one of the girls held the funnel cake at the window and looked at us in silence. Perhaps she wanted to use telepathy to inform us our order was ready. Had we not just paid ten dollars for the funnel cake and if we were not somewhat afraid of the funnel cake girl, we might have given her a stern lecture about professionalism and demanded a refund. We opted to take the funnel cake, complain to her boss, and leave the park immediately. Our passive-aggressive campaign for revenge against the funnel cake girls continues with this blog entry.
We returned to the farm about 10 PM, having only spent about five hours at Frontier City. We are certainly not as young as we once were. Our amusement park experience left us so very disgusted, we just may not go back….till next year.
